Read Online Heart Surgeon in Portugal by Anna Ramsay - Free Book Online Page B

sure.
    Rafe’s eloquent left eyebrow said it all. A wolf whistle couldn’t be more vocal.
    Ellie poised herself on the edge of the pool, toes curled and ready to dive, praying everything would stay in place. She dived in a bit clumsily and hid herself away beneath the rippling surface, telling herself she was sensibly protecting her body from the ultra-violet rays of the sun.
    When she clambered out again, those laser-eyes were waiting.
    Her attempt at distracting him had certainly worked! Seeing this gave Ellie quite a buzz.
    ‘Now I see why,’ came the lazy drawl, ‘you go around in that dreadful shirt’
    Ellie gulped in exasperation. What exactly was that supposed to mean?
    Quickly she grabbed the shirt and slung it over her wet shoulders, meaning to go back to her room and shower off the pool water, but his next words stopped her in her tracks.
    ‘Throw it away,’ he said. ‘You look so much nicer without it.’
    All of a sudden he reached out, pulled the shirt from her and threw it into the pool, where it bobbed for a moment, filled with water, and then sank to the bottom. ‘Oh, how could you,’ she said reproachfully. ‘Now I’m going to have to -’
    ‘Leave it.’ he commanded, staring blatantly at her exposed body.
    To hide her confusion – a kind of thrilling embarrassment – Ellie leaned forward and flung her hair down, ruffling it with her fingers to loosen the clinging strands. It had grown so much longer since she’d been ill that it almost touched the terracotta tiles, droplets of moisture spattering down in tiny dark patches.
    ‘Aren’t you going for a swim? ‘she asked breathlessly, shaking her wet hair sexily like the French girls she had seen on the beaches.
    ‘Might as well,’ he said laconically. ‘Let these dry off for a bit.’ He gestured at the table top and Ellie’s mouth gaped in dismay. Her hands flew to her face. ‘Mr Harland!’ she gasped.
    ‘Rafe.’
    ‘Rafe - I’m really really sorry!’ she said wretchedly, her horrified stare taking in the wet blotches spreading across the pages he had been working on, making the black ink run.
    It was like a replay of that incident on the plane!
    Something though had changed: then she had cared nothing for Mr Big’s approval … now Ellie was genuinely upset at what she had done. If only he didn’t use a fountain pen, it wouldn’t look nearly as bad.
    But Rafe didn’t seem overly dismayed. ‘It’ll soon dry,’ he said kindly, ‘time I took a break anyway.’ He stripped off his tee-shirt and then stopped, giving her one of those quizzical glances that sent shivers down her spine. ‘You might want to look the other way.’ He peeled off the rest of his clothes in one movement and made a running dive into the deep end, swimming the length of the pool underwater and emerging to see that the bird had flown …
    Ellie sat on her bed feeling awful but telling herself it wasn’t the end of the world. Rafe hadn’t torn her off a strip; in fact he’d been remarkably unperturbed. Then a bright idea struck. There was a way she could make amends!
    Remembering the way he had dealt with her shirt, and what he had said, a warm melting glow ran through her whole body. But she wasn’t going to run around in just a bikini, so she pulled on a strappy top and linen shorts and went barefoot back to the terrace.
    Rafe was by now out of the pool with a towel wrapped around his middle. ‘I was just thinking -’ said Ellie eagerly, pausing to catch her breath, her eyes shining.
    ‘Sounds ominous.’ Rafe slung a dry towel round his neck stethoscope-style.
    ‘I could type those notes out for you if you don’t mind me using your laptop! I can get them done tonight while you’re out.’
    Rafe looked down into the shining hazel eyes upturned to his. ‘That’s a very kind thought,’ he said, looking amused at the very idea. ‘But you know, there’s a lot of difficult terminology. Even the ‘trained medical secretaries’ find the